Google: Beat artificial breast cancer with artificial intelligence

Cancer is still a scourge of humanity. 600,000 people die every year from breast cancer. Google works against this threat - with artificial intelligence.

It is still difficult for me to write about cancer here. This terrible disease has taken away my mother, many relatives, friends and countless revered artists. My mom had defeated him once before, years later the cancer was back and this time she had no chance.

Already at that time I hoped on the second diagnosis that medicine could have made so much progress that my mum can now be better treated. In fact, technologies and treatments are improving very quickly and really significantly, but unfortunately that's not enough. Almost exactly to the day 12 years ago, she died so and still today I cringe briefly, if anywhere is reported about cancer or I read in an article about it.

Last night, when I read Ruth Porat's post on the Google blog , it happened to me once again . She once worked for Morgan Stanley, switching from there to Google or Alphabet, earning her bread as Chief Financial Officer. She has also received the cancer diagnosis twice in her lifetime and now, fortunately, she can report that she has been able to defeat the cancer twice.

In her article, she writes that both the detection and the diagnosis of various cancers have improved significantly. Such a finding is therefore no longer automatically a death sentence for the patient today. However, far too many people are still dying from cancer every year. Breast cancer alone requires 600,000 victims a year, but at least this number is declining.

Google has also been active in the medical field for many years, investing a great deal of money, energy and brain lumbos in this research, including in the field of cancers. For example, artificial intelligence helps detect lung cancer more reliably. In the meantime, the company is also specifically researching the impact AI can have on breast cancer, both in terms of recognizing the disease and diagnosing how best to treat it.

One of the biggest problems with treatment is that it is often difficult and time-consuming to differentiate a malignant cancer from a benign one, and that ultimately in 2019 an expert will still decide with the power of his eyes and a microscope must be how to treat the cancer. On the blog Ruth Porat writes:

A process called staging helps determine how far the cancer has spread, which affects the course of treatment. The staggering largely depends on clinicians and radiologists looking at the history, physical examinations, and pictures. In addition, pathologists study tissue samples from a biopsy to assess the microscopic appearance and biological properties of each patient's cancer and to assess aggressiveness. However, the pathological assessment is a tedious and costly process that - unbelievably - continues to require an expert to evaluate microscopic features in biological tissue with the human eye and microscope!

No matter how far the technologies have progressed in the past years and decades: It is still necessary that a great deal of manpower is used to get to a first diagnosis of breast cancer in the first place. KI can not do that either, but at least we can, thanks to artificial intelligence, make it possible to accelerate many processes so that we lose significantly less time.

Not only do we gain time: Google developed a deep-learning algorithm last year that could help pathologists assess tissue and better understand the spread and extent of disease in virtually every case. As a result, the localization of the cancer would not only work faster, but also more accurately and cost-effectively.

But even with Google you know that the artificial intelligence alone can not judge. The insights gained through AI must therefore be paired with human intelligence and placed in the hands of qualified researchers, surgeons, oncologists, radiologists and others. Google's recent studies also show that the best results are achieved when physicians and technology work together and complement each other.

Google knows that you are still at the beginning of a long journey here. But it is reassuring to see that artificial intelligence not only makes our smartphone photos more beautiful, but also ensures that when typing we automatically suggest the next possible word, but also helps to significantly extend the lives of patients a better, more effective fight against cancer.